JUST 12 months after reorganising its former NRS and Controls Center businesses and renaming it Climate Center, Wolseley UK, has announced further radical changes in a move to focus on its air conditioning and refrigeration business.
The decision to sell heating products alongside air conditioning and refrigeration equipment in its 6 branches has been reversed and there are big changes being made to its branch structure. All heating spares products are to removed from Climate Center locations by the end of July. 'We have concluded that heating should be handled independently of air conditioning and refrigeration and even in these areas we need to specialise.' said Climate Center brand director Alan Ball. 'From August 1 Climate Center and Parts Center Commercial will be totally separate.'

'The merging of commercial heating with refrigeration and air conditioning was with hindsight an error,' he admitted. 'In particular, the merging of sales teams and branches led to a disjointed businesses and we lost a lot of good people. You can't expect a salesman to go out and sell acr and heating spares.'

Key to the new approach is the creation of three distinct types of branch: main delivery branches, service centres and collect branches.

The ten Climate Center main delivery branches will stock the complete range of air conditioning and refrigeration products, and focus on providing a service to major contractors, and supermarkets within a defined area. They will also support local customers in their own area and, where applicable, customers of the service centres or collect locations.

The fifteen service centres will also carry the full product range, and focus on servicing their local customer base.

The remaining Climate branches will be 'collect' operations, placed at convenient locations, and often located alongside other Wolseley brands such as Pipe Center.